I Loved Oliver Postgate

I hate it that Oliver Postgate is dead. More than anything that has happened in recent years, his passing reminds me of my own mortality. I think that as we get older it becomes more and more difficult to avoid a certain amount of self-pity creeping into our grief. My childhood memories now carry an added tinge of sadness, because Oliver is gone, and my generation will not be far behind him.

He could easily have been an evil genius, you know. He could have been a Svengali, a mesmerist using the power of that unique voice for nefarious purposes. And what a voice it was, a personification of the Pied Piper's tune that had all us kids from near and far running to sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV. As adults it had the effect of instantly evoking those memories of that care-free time and helped at least one, me, survive many a panic-attack. I loved Bagpuss. I loved Noggin the Nog. I loved Oliver Postgate.

Did Oliver and Peter win any cartoonist awards? They must have, I can't think of two people who influenced cartoonists, in one way or another, more than they. I remember one night Tom (Sweeney Toddler, School Belle, etc, etc,) Paterson and I trying hard to dredge the name of Grakulus from some dark hidden place and making the common mistake of remembering it as Drakulus - when we should both have been working on some comic pages. Joe, over at The Forbidden Planet Blog has posted a nice tribute to Oliver.